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Thursday, July 24, 2025

TDC looks to business tourism

by

20160508

Tourism Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe has told the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny's (TDC) Con­ven­tions Bu­reau to en­sure T&T takes ad­van­tage of the bil­lion-dol­lar con­ven­tion mar­ket.

Cit­ing a World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC) re­port which shows that busi­ness trav­el spend­ing is ex­pect­ed to grow by 1.2 per cent to US$3 bil­lion this year, the min­is­ter urged the agency to take ad­van­tage of this lu­cra­tive mar­ket.

"T&T Con­ven­tion Bu­reau acts as a one-stop shop for meet­ing plan­ners seek­ing in­de­pen­dent in­for­ma­tion and as­sis­tance on host­ing events in T&T," she said in her ad­dress at Meet­ing Plan­ners Cock­tail Re­cep­tion and Cul­tur­al Night at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre held to wel­come nine US plan­ners who are in T&T on a study tour and as­sured they would find that the des­ti­na­tion was a vi­able al­ter­na­tive.

"Tourism has be­come a ma­jor play­er in in­ter­na­tion­al com­merce, with its busi­ness vol­ume equal­ing or even sur­pass­ing that of oil ex­ports, food prod­ucts or au­to­mo­biles," Cud­joe said.

"There is an in­creas­ing ap­petite for trav­el the world over and the Caribbean con­tin­ues to be a re­gion of high ap­peal."

In ad­di­tion to the coun­try's en­er­gy based econ­o­my, the min­is­ter said the fi­nan­cial and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors have bol­stered T&T's po­si­tion as a pre­mier meet­ings des­ti­na­tion in the Caribbean. She said growth in these ar­eas, in ad­di­tion to in­creas­ing air­lift, ad­vanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ever-in­creas­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed ho­tels, gave T&T the push it need­ed to de­vel­op the largest ho­tel con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties in the South Caribbean.

"North Amer­i­cans are ex­pect­ed to trav­el in force this year, thanks to the im­prov­ing US econ­o­my and strong US dol­lar. Out bound trips were up by five per cent last year, which was ahead of fore­cast," she said.

"WTTC stat­ed that about 60 per cent of trips are for hol­i­day pur­pos­es, while the re­main­ing 40 per cent are split be­tween busi­ness trav­el and vis­it­ing friends and fam­i­ly (VFR) in 2015. In the case of T&T, the re­verse was true. Rough­ly 60 per cent of trips were split be­tween busi­ness trav­el and VFR, while the re­main­ing 40 per cent of trips are for hol­i­day pur­pos­es."

Cud­joe said a re­port from IPK In­ter­na­tion­al, a lead­ing trav­el con­sult­ing firm, pre­dict­ed a five per cent in­crease in North Amer­i­can out bound trav­el this year, based on its Trav­el Con­fi­dence In­dex which mea­sured trav­el in­ten­tion. The firm's pres­i­dent Rolf D Fre­itag said 2016 should be the best year that the North Amer­i­can out­bound trav­el mar­ket has ever seen.

With such an op­ti­mistic fore­cast, said Cud­joe, "it is ex­pect­ed that the con­fer­ence and meet­ing sched­uled ought to be full."

She said busi­ness tourism make up about 20 per cent of all ar­rivals to T&T and 80 per cent of busi­ness tourism ar­rivals come from the North Amer­i­can mar­ket.


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